In search of dreams
by SimplyNemo
Summary: 6 years after her last journey to the Labyrinth, Sarah's family moves to England. Without her. Left with no home, no job, and little money, who is she to turn to but the ones who will always be there, if she needs them? How has the labyrinth and its inhabitants changed, and how has she changed herself? JarethxSarah eventually.
1. 1: The End, or The Beginning

This is a fanfiction I made years ago that never really got finished cause life happened. So, I decided to rewrite it, and flesh it out a bit (a lot). I can't promise regular updates, but I can promise it will get finished.

I obviously don't own the rights to The Labyrinth, or the characters belonging to it. All I claim right to is my imagination.

* * *

 **Chapter One: The End, or The Beginning**

"I'll miss you, Sarah."

Feeling small chubby arms holding her tight, Sarah couldn't help but smile through her tears. She ruffled the untidy blonde hair of her little brother, who released his firm hold on her a little to look up at her with big sad grey eyes.

"Can't you come with us?" he begged, for the umpteenth time.

"I wish I could, Toby." She clutched him tighter to her, as she gazed out at the sea of boxes that had once been her home.

"But why?" the boy persisted, sure that he'd get an answer eventually if only he asked enough times. This was a trick he had learnt from his mother, on whom this technique always worked when it came to the subjects of sweets.

"It's complicated, sweetheart. I'll explain it to you when you get older, okay?

"But Imma go to school soon. I'm older now!" he exclaimed, presenting an admirably irresistible pout to his sister, who couldn't help laughing a little. "But, Sarah… It won't be the same without your stories."

"I know. I'll miss telling them too." She sighed. Then, she crouched down and put her hands on his shoulders. "Listen, Toby. Sometimes in life we find ourselves in situations that aren't good, and that can't be avoided. But no matter how much we might want to, we can't change the past. All we can do is to see the good in the situation, and make the best of it. After all, complaining only makes matters worse, because you keep reminding yourself of all the bad. After all, complaining never did Hoggle any good, right?"

Toby let out a spontaneous laugh at the mention of one of his favourite characters.

"He was pretty silly, wasn't he?"

"He was," Sarah replied, laughing also. "But, once he stopped complaining, he realized that even though he was afraid, he was brave enough to help his friends and defeat the goblin king, right?"

"And save the prince!" Toby exclaimed happily.

An annoyed sigh came from the doorway behind them. Sarah turned around, only to see her stepmother.

"If you two don't mind, we could use some help with the boxes." Toby was out the door in a second, carrying a big box of toys while shouting at his father to look at how strong he was.

"Sarah…" Another sigh. "We've talked about this. He's growing too old for such stories. He'll be a school boy in a few months, and he doesn't need this kind of stuff and nonsense. He needs stories he learns something from, not just fairytales."

Sarah longed for the power to tell her that he was a child, not just a future adult. She wished she could make her understand that even though a story doesn't teach you how to spell A-P-P-L-E, or that 2+2=4, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't learn anything from it. However, she knew it would be of no use to try. She had tried before, but it is impossible to tell someone something when they only hear your words, instead of listening. So, she only responded with a sigh of her own, and continued moving boxes.

* * *

A few hours later they were off, leaving a waving Sarah in the driveway of an empty house. Adjusting her backpack, and hoisting a gym bag onto her shoulder, she took one last long look at the house, and then turned away. Taking the handle of her suitcase, she started walking.

"Time to go, Merlin."

Merlin was sitting on the lawn, looking up at the big house. He let out a soft whimper, before getting up and trudging after her. Bending down to pet him, Sarah sighed. In fact, she sighed several times as they walked on, with nothing to interrupt her thoughts but the perpetual sound of rolling wheels. Her father's words were still ringing in her ears.

 _"_ _You can't hold on to these childish dreams forever. You need a real job and a proper education, not these fairytales. Writing is not a real job, and you can't sustain a good life on a writer's income. You're 22. It's time to grow up, you can't live here forever. Perhaps your stepmother is right. It might do you some good to be on your own, make you see the realistic side of the world."_

Talk about getting pushed out of the nest… As if getting a job with no previous work experience was the easiest thing on earth. And so what if she wanted to be an author? What else was she supposed to do with all the stories in her head? Why give up on her dreams if doing so would make her unhappy? Certainly not worth getting kicked out over. Of course, she didn't get kicked out. She was only forced to move out, with no place to live and very little money , while her family moved to England, which was at least one expensive plane ticket away…

Secretly, Sarah had her suspicions about her stepmother's involvement in her present predicament. She doubted her father would have had any objections to her following her dreams if it weren't for the fact that her stepmother disliked the "corrupting" influence she had on her little brother. Liking fairytales was one thing, but she made him **believe** in them. Oh, the horror! Sarah sighed, yet again. She didn't think her stepmother was a bad person, really. She was only rather selfish. She would do anything for those who belonged to her, as long as she thought it in their best interest (which did not always mean it actually was), but Sarah had never really belonged to her. They were very different people, opposite side of the scale. Sarah wanted Toby to be independent and creative, his mother expected him to fit in and be smart.

So lost in her own thoughts, was she, that she had neither awareness of where she was going or how long she had been walking. She had no place to go, and nothing to do but think. Some part of her hoped that if she thought long enough, she'd come up with a solution. She had been in worse situations before after all. Well, only the one, but still. Her walking and thinking came to a very sudden stop. There was a splash, and the unmistakable feeling of water slowly filling a shoe. Confused, Sarah blinked and forced herself back to reality. She was almost impressed by what she found. She was standing at the edge of a lake, actually standing with one foot in it. Not just any lake either, but **her** lake, in **her** park. She'd always called it that, after that day when everything changed. The lake was glimmering in the evening sunlight, looking like it was made of liquid gold. Chuckling a little at her own absentmindedness, she took a step back.

Looking at her reflection in the water, Sarah sighed one big sigh, and determined it to be her last, for the day at least. 6 years… It was strange to think it had been so long. While she had stopped talking to her strange friends over the years, she had never stopped believing in the reality of her adventure. It had happened, although no one knew it. Forced into adulthood, she had been forced to let them go, but…

"I… need you. All of you. Now more than ever."

She didn't know what she expected, wasn't sure if anything would happen at all.

"I just want a place to call home…"

The water seemed to shake, the reflection being rippled by tiny waves. Sarah frowned.

"How strange."

When the shaking stopped, the ruin behind Sarah reflected in the water had changed. In its place was a majestic and bizarre castle, lit by an orange sky. It was strangely familiar too, which is the last thing Sarah remembers thinking before the world started spinning, and the castle seemed to get closer and closer.


	2. 2: A long lost memory

**Chapter Two; A long lost memory**

Spinning around and around, the world was nothing but flashes of colour. Red, green, white, blue, black. Then, it stopped. Sarah looked around, slowly, feeling dizzy. She was in a ballroom. The lights seemed to shine too brightly, the sounds seemed too loud. All around her were people in beautiful ball gowns, dancing to music that seemed too far away quite to hear. Looking around, she wondered if the strange masks the people were wearing hid things better or worse than what they portrayed.

 _…_ _as the world falls down._

The words of the song broke through. As if following the steps of a dance long forgotten, Sarah started to walk in between the couples, not really knowing why. The dancing couples surrounding her hardly seemed to matter. For a moment, she thought she saw someone in a strangely intricate metal mask and dark blue jacket watching her, but in another second, another spin of the dancers, he had vanished. Finally, she stopped, a huge mirror in front of her.

 _…_ _falling down._

She was wearing the same dress she had been wearing the last time, she realized. She had thought it beautiful back then, but seeing it on her as she looked now, it seemed all too much. It made her uncomfortable looking at her reflection. All the white fluff and the jewels, it just didn't look real. Like it was just a… fantasy. Looking away, she found herself looking into a pair of sad eyes, one blue and one green. Jareth started as Sarah returned his look. He was standing behind her, looking at her reflection over her shoulder, while she was looking up at the reflection of his.

 _Falling._

"Hello." It was a very conventional remark, but for some reason nothing more unconventional struck Sarah at that moment.

"…Hello," he replied hesitatingly, with nothing of the confidence and bravado that usually made up his manner. Sarah wondered why. He looked exactly as he had done the last time she saw him, but something seemed to be different.

"What's wrong?" She asked, tilting her head to the side. If anything, this seemed to make him even more unsettled.

"I... Uh, this isn't how it usually goes…" He mumbled, seemingly more to himself than to her. "The same dream, over and over, and now…"

His dream? Wasn't it hers? No, it was, it had to be, and yet… He was right. This wasn't how it usually went.

"Is…" Sarah hesitated, knowing how absurd her question would sound. If it was a dream, it didn't really matter either way… "Is this _my_ dream, or _yours_?"

Jareth had never heard anything like it. What was the meaning of this!? And in **his** dream no less!

 _…_ _falling in l-_

The mirror shattered.

* * *

Sarah gasped for breath as she opened her eyes. Her head felt oddly heavy, and she had to blink a few times before the world came into focus. A sea of leaves and branches spread out ahead of her. Or, rather, over her. With an effort, she sat up. Trunks and roots to join the branches and leaves filled her vision.

"Where am I?"

She had been… with Jareth? No. That dream… Ugh, weird. She felt a shudder run down her spine. Before that, though. The lake, and the castle. The castle beyond the goblin city… Could it be? Could she be back?

"It makes about as much sense as anything else at this point." She said to herself, and started to walk in no particular direction. If she was in the Labyrinth, trying to go in any particular direction wouldn't help much anyways.

It was eerily silent, not even a frog's croak to be heard. At least there was no laughter. A shudder of horror ran down Sarah's spine as the memory returned to her. It was strange, to actually be here again. Sure, she had never stopped believing, but she had hidden it too well. She had thought of it, but it had only really existed as a story for Toby. As the years went by, the memories faded, and it became a story she knew was real rather than one she remembered. Now, walking amongst trees bent in ways so impossible they could only have grown in one place, it all came back to her. How real it all had been, how wonderful it had felt, amidst all the scary things. To truly leave it behind, impossible.

A rumbling roar filled the air, making the ground tremble with its force. It was followed by two squeaks, and the sound of feet running away. Then, the ground shook again as other feet started running in the opposite direction as the first ones, which also happened to be the direction Sarah was in. The leaves of the trees shook at something lumbered past them, getting closer and closer. One of the trees close to Sarah shook. Then, suddenly, it stopped.

"Sarah?" A wonderfully familiar voice said in disbelief. "Sarah!" Ludo came crashing out of the bushes, leaves and twigs twined into his fur all over, and Sarah had half a second to brace herself before she felt big strong fluffy arms wrap around her and lift her of her feet.

"Ludo!" Sarah exclaimed after a moment of wordless surprise, and hugged her friend back.

"Sarah back?" Ludo asked, with a smile so wide his cheeks bulged, while he put her back down.

"It looks like I am," she replied, smiling herself. "All packed and ready to move in, so to say." Gesturing towards the suitcase next to her. "Where are Hoggle and Sir Didymus?"

"Don't know," Ludo said, with a defeated shrug.

"Oh, well. At least I've found you. Do you know the way out of the forest?"

Ludo nodded vigorously. "Ludo know forest well. Ludo live here." And with that he started to walk, taking the suitcase and carrying it in his hands.

Following him, Sarah looked up at the big fury creature. "You live here, all on your own?"

"Ludo keep forest safe."

"But doesn't it get lonely out here on your own?"

"Ludo missed Sarah. But, Ludo have rock friends." A few of the rocks on the ground close to where he was walking rolled closer affectionately, as if to prove the point.

In a very short time, they came to a tall stone wall, with a metal door. Opening it, Ludo led her through, for her to see the goblin city, in all its bizarre glory, spread out before her. Looking at those unusual houses, she started thinking.

"Ludo, do you think I could live here? I mean, I need a place to live after all, and seeing as I am here…" Sarah hesitated. There was the matter of the Goblin King, after all. The city was technically his, and to live under him… Then again, there weren't really any options, and now that she was here she wasn't entirely sure she could get back. Ludo on the other hand, had no such doubts. He was nodding so vigorously that his entire body shook, and his big tail was actually wagging. Noticing his happy excitement, Sarah couldn't help laughing. Hesitations could wait. What mattered now was finding the rest of her friends.

"First of all, I need to find Hoggle." She said happily, starting to wonder how she would go about doing that.

"No." Ludo said sternly, shaking his head, all his previous excitement gone in a moment. "Hoggle bad."

"What? No, Hoggle is my friend!" Sarah stared at him. Even he had agreed that Hoggle was a friend in the end.

"Hoggle Jareth friends now." Ludo looked at Sarah with big sad eyes. But…. How could he be friends with Jareth? Surely, he must be mistaken. Jareth had treated him horribly. But something must have put the thought in his mind…

"Why do you think so?"

"Lives, works there," Ludo said, pointing up at the castle in the distance. How… How could he? Living up there, with him, knowing what he had done, and still did without a doubt! And why? What was this about? Jareth despised him, why would he, of all people, hire Hoggle?

"We're going to the castle." Sarah stomped off straight through the city, leaving astonished goblins staring at her as they were going about their chores. None of them were entirely sure if they should attack her or not, but remembering well how it went last time, and seeing the cause of their afflictions next to her, they decided against it on the grounds that they had been given no orders to the contrary.


End file.
